Food choppers are well known alternatives to using a knife to cut or chop foods such as vegetables, fruit, cheese, nuts, etc. Although electric choppers are available, many people prefer a smaller and less expensive manual food chopper. One popular type of manual food chopper is the plunger chopper. In the plunger chopper, a housing encloses a rotating chopping blade with a shaft. A plunger emerges from the top of the housing and has a lower end which interacts with the shaft of the chopping blade so that each time the plunger is depressed, the chopping blade rotates and moves down to cut food underneath the housing. An internal spring causes the plunger to return to the starting position after each press. Mechanisms for converting the linear motion of the plunger into the rotational motion of the chopping blade are well known in the art. For example, one type of a plunger-style manual food chopper is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,933,315, which is incorporated herein by reference.
One problem with existing plunger-style food choppers is their round shape. Conventional plunger choppers have round chopping footprints due to the rotation of the blade during each chop. As used herein, the term “chopping footprint” refers to the region under a chopping device in which the chopping blades may fall when the plunger is depressed. Even if the housing of the chopper is formed as a different non-round shape, the chopping footprint will always be round as a result of the rotating blade. This limits the size and types of foods that the chopper can be used to chop. Large or unusually shaped items must be cut into smaller pieces in order to fit within the chopping footprint. For example, it is impossible to chop a cucumber using a conventional plunger chopper unless the cucumber is first cut into pieces that fit within the chopping footprint. Furthermore, simply making the chopping blade larger is not a satisfactory solution because the device becomes too large and takes up too much storage space.
Accordingly, there is a need for a manual food chopper with a larger and non-round chopping footprint.